No More Ransom, the initiative launched in 2016 by Kaspersky, law enforcement and cybersecurity companies to fight ransomware and help victims restore their files, turns five today. The initiative made it possible to prevent the construction of over 900 million dollars of illegal profits and allowed over 6 million people to download decryption tools for free.
I ransomware they are gods software malicious programs that, by using encryption, prevent users from accessing their data. Also, in exchange for access the attackers demand a ransom. In recent years, the prevalence of this type of malicious software has increased, causing enormous damage to private users and organizations around the world.
Details on Kaspersky’s ransomware initiative
In 2016, to help users and organizations fight the ransomware phenomenon, the National High Tech Crime Unit of the Dutch National Police, theEuropean Cybercrime Centre di Europol, Kaspersky e McAfee joined together to create a website to help victims of ransomware attacks recover data encrypted without the need to pay any ransom. To achieve this, participants in the initiative posted decryption tools on the website that, once downloaded and run, would help victims of specific ransomware families recover their data without paying any ransom. In addition to the decryption tools, the site contains advice of prevention e guide on the steps to follow to report a cybercrime in your country.
Since 2016, the initiative has grown passing from 4 to over 170 partners, with ben 121 decryption tools available to users. These instruments help in the fight against the 150 ransomware families and, for the past five years, have been downloaded by about six million people. According to the experts of No More Ransom, the participants in the initiative prevented cybercriminals from illegally earning over $ 900 million.
A long way to help families affected by ransomware
Kaspersky was and still is one of the founding partners who contributed to the creation of the five decryption tools for the fight against ransomware and who helped recover data encrypted by 32 ransomware families. Since 2016, these tools have been downloaded more than 150,000 times.
“I am very happy that the initiative has allowed us to help so many people recover their files from the start without paying any ransom. We will continue to fight ransomware with our industry-savvy partners and law enforcement agencies around the world to help even more users and prevent further damage. ” ha commentato Jornt van der Weil, security researcher del Kaspersky Global Research and Analysis Team.
To learn more about Kaspersky’s fight against ransomware and to learn more about the No More Ransom initiative, you can visit the website of the nomoreransom.org initiative.